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RATS BD
Education · Module 02

IT Equipment & Laboratory Asset Tracking

Know where laptops and lab instruments are between audits, and get an alert when one leaves.

Scope a pilot All education modules
Overview

The problem it solves

An annual audit tells you what was missing in March. It does not tell you when it went, or from where, which is the only information that would have helped.

Between audits, campus equipment moves constantly and informally — a laptop borrowed for a conference, an instrument moved to another lab for a term, a projector that went to an event and never came back. None of it is theft; most of it is just untracked, until the year it turns out to be both.

Door portals turn movement into events. An asset leaving a lab is logged, an asset leaving the building without an issue record raises an alert, and issue-and-return becomes a scan rather than a signature in a book nobody reconciles.

IT Equipment & Laboratory Asset Tracking in use at a site in Bangladesh
How it runs

The workflow

Four steps, in this order. A step out of sequence is a broken process, not a variation.

  1. 01

    Commission

    Equipment is tagged and bound to its home location, custodian and issue rules.

  2. 02

    Issue and return

    Loans are recorded by read rather than by signature, with due dates and automatic reminders.

  3. 03

    Monitor movement

    Door portals log assets crossing lab and building boundaries; unauthorised movement alerts immediately.

  4. 04

    Audit

    Periodic sweeps reconcile against the ledger, with far fewer exceptions because movement was already tracked.

Architecture

What it is
made of

Four layers, in the order data moves: a tag is read, the read becomes an event, a rule decides what it means, and a business system acts on it.

  1. 01

    Tags

    What carries the identity

    • UHF labels for laptops and IT equipment
    • On-metal tags for lab instruments
    • Tamper-evident on portable high-value items
  2. 02

    Readers & edge

    What turns presence into an event

    • Door portals at lab and building exits
    • Handhelds for audits and searches
    • Desktop encoder for commissioning
  3. 03

    Platform

    What decides what the event means

    • Asset ledger with custodian and home location
    • Issue and return workflow with due dates
    • Movement alerting on unauthorised exit
    • Utilisation reporting by asset class
  4. 04

    Integrations

    What acts on the decision

    • ITAM
    • LMS
    • Finance
Components

What we supply

  • 01

    Door portal

    Slim and flush at lab and building exits. Direction-aware, so leaving and returning are different events rather than two identical reads.

    • Flush door-frame mount
    • Direction-aware in / out
    • Alert on unauthorised exit
    • PoE, single cable
  • 02

    On-metal instrument tag

    Lab instruments are metal boxes, which defeat a standard label. On-metal construction is not an upgrade here, it is the only thing that works.

    • On-metal construction
    • Adhesive or screw mount
    • Chemical-resistant facing
    • Survives lab cleaning regimes
Outcomes

What to expect

Ranges, not single flattering figures. Baselines are captured for four to eight weeks before a pilot starts, so the delta is measured rather than claimed.

Asset loss
20–35% lower
Find time
Minutes, not days
Unauthorised exit
Alerted live
Loan reconciliation
Automatic
Before you commit

What to plan for

Every module has a failure mode. These are the ones that actually bite on this one, and what we do about them — because finding out later costs more than knowing now.

On-metal tags cost several times a paper label, and lab estates are large.
Mix the estate deliberately — labels on anything that will take one, on-metal only where the surface demands it. Tag selection happens per asset class during commissioning, not by bulk order.
Connects to

Your existing systems

  • ITAM
  • LMS
  • Finance

Where it earns its keep

  • Campuses with large laptop and tablet fleets
  • Science and engineering faculties with portable instruments
  • Institutions with recurring unexplained equipment loss
Scope a pilot
Questions

Before you
buy

The things operations directors actually ask on the first call.

Does a portal stop someone walking out?

No — it alerts. This is asset governance, not physical security. If you need to physically stop removal, that is a different conversation involving barriers and staff.

Can students borrow equipment without staff?

Yes, with a self-service issue point tied to their ID card. That is the same mechanism as the library module and is often deployed together.

What about equipment that legitimately leaves campus?

It is issued against a due date, so the exit is expected and logged rather than flagged. The alert fires on movement without an issue record, not on movement itself.

Same platform

The rest of education

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